As the country marks the Stonewall anniversary, Johnson recalled key moments over the last 50 years when Chicago’s gay bars have been at the center of the LGBTQ community’s fight for equal rights. Still, like the Stonewall Inn, Johnston said Chicago’s gay activism took place in the bars - including Sidetrack, which he opened 37 years ago in the historic Boystown neighborhood.Īs co-founder of the civil rights organization Equality Illinois, Johnston has been an outspoken leader of Chicago’s anti-discrimination movement.
he told me, that he decided that he had to go to a gay bar for the first time in his life. The Stonewall riots helped galvanize the gay rights movement nationwide.īut in Chicago, even after the riots, activist Art Johnston said police raids of gay bars would continue to make headlines for another decade. From WBEZ Chicago, its This American Life. Rioters barricaded cops inside the bar and for several days took to the streets in an effort to put an end to years of harassment. Police firing cases languish in Chicago law.
WBEZ CHICAGO GAY BARS DOWNLOAD
It’s been 50 years since violent protests broke out on June 28, 1969, following a raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in the Greenwich Village neighborhood in New York. THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985: DOWNLOAD ISSUE: About WCMG. The first gay establishments on Halsted Street north of Belmont also opened in the mid-1970s they included Augie’s lesbian bar, Little Jim’s gay bar, the Women’s Center, and the Gay Horizons. Ap A personnel hemorrhage since late 2020 has cut the size of Chicagos Law Department by a quarter, a WBEZ analysis of city data finds.